Syllabus (Tentative)

Contact information

Instructor: Elizabeth Chang
Office: Hodson Tech 232
Office Telephone: 301.696.3564
Email address: chang@hood.edu
Please give all messages pertaining to this class a subject line which begins with "IT 382" or send the message through Blackboard. .
Office hours:By appointment, or drop-in. Please be sure to contact me if you have any questions.
Course web site: Course documents will be posted at http://wyrd.hood.edu/~echang/it382/, on Blackboard, or on both. There is a link from Blackboard to the main course site.

Scheduling

Time
Tuesday & Thursday 3:25-4:40; Class meets in Hodson Tech 113. The first class meeting is Tuesday, August 25; the last is Thursday, December 10. There is no class on Tuesday, October 13 (Midterm Break), or Thursday, November 26, (Thanksgiving Break).

Prerequisite

• IT 280 Elements of Web Development II or permission of the instructor.
• You should be able to create standards-compliant web documents using XHTML and CSS without using a WYSIWYG tool.
• You should be able to plan and write short reports in standard English.
• You should be willing and able to learn to use new tools by studying examples and reading documentation.
• You should be willing to experiment, to tolerate unstructured material, and to work with problems which do not have a single "right answer".

Course Objectives

Upon successfully completing this course the you should be able to:

• discuss the key issues in user-centered design, including user needs and behaviors, navigation, searching, labeling, usability, accessibility
• propose effective organization schemes and structures for web sites
• evaluate and propose design features to enhance usability of web sites
• understand the basics of project planning and management as it applies to web information systems
• use a variety of editors and content management tools to develop web sites.
• collaborate as part of a team

Readings

• Don't Make Me Think 2nd edition, Steve Krug, New Riders

Additional required online course readings will be indicated in the class notes.

Course Requirements

• Class participation & Labs Good participation includes asking interesting, thought provoking questions, adding ideas and "meat" to the discussion, making good contributions to group activities, etc. Regular class attendance is a essential for satisfactory participation. Class sessions will often incorporate short individual and team lab or written exercises.
• Homework Homework assignments will include both written reports and site development projects. Some may be team assignments for two students.
• Individual projects & presentation The course will include one or two substantive individual projects. An oral presentation to the class will be one part of each project.
• Team project & presentation The course may include one substantive team projects. A group oral presentation to the class will be one part of the project.

Grading

Student work will be graded on the quality and thoroughness of the work and on compliance with assignment specs. Grading for group projects will consider both the overall results and the contributions of the individual to the team effort. In general, work will be rated:

• A: Excellent - all work completed on time; fully meets, and in places exceeds, all specifications and is of exceptional quality.
• B: Good - all work completed; meets minimal stated specifications.
• C: Acceptable - all work completed; meets many, but not all, specifications.
• D: Weak - work fails to meet many specifications.
• F: Unacceptable - work not completed; fails to meet most specifications.

Course Policies

You are responsible for the readings. Class lectures will assume that you read the assigned readings, and will focus on concepts and important points. You should look over readings before the class for which they are assigned, and be prepared to refer back to them as you work on assignments.

You are responsible for all work covered or assigned in class. If you know that you must miss a class, make arrangements in advance. If you miss a class, find out what you missed.

You must adhere to the principles of the Hood College Honor Code.

You must follow to the Acceptable Use Policies for wyrd.hood.edu.

What You Need: Essential Tools

The labs should have everything ready to use. If you want to work on your own computer, you may need to install some additional programs. Most of the following programs are all free. You can download them from the indicated sites to install your own computer.

A Web Browser

• Mozilla Firefox a is free, fast, secure, feature-full new browser that can be downloaded from http://www.mozilla.com. It can be enhanced with add-on extensions. Useful extensions for Firefox include the Web Developer and JavaScript Debugger. It is installed in the labs. All class examples will be developed using Firefox.

A text or programming editor:

This is not the same as a word processor such as Microsoft Word. A word processor puts a lot of extra information about formatting in the document. A text editor just saves the characters that you typed.

• In a pinch, you can use Windows Notepad, but there are better alternatives.
• Crimson Editor (http://www.crimsoneditor.com/), a professional text editor for Windows, with tabbed multiple documents, syntax highlighting, and more. Free. It is installed in the labs.
• If you work in the Linux lab, you can use VI or EMACS.

File Transfer and Remote Login Utility

When you publish your documents on the web, you must save them on a web server, a computer that will send documents over the Internet in response to requests

• If you do not create your documents directly on the server, you need a File Transfer Program, or FTP utility.
• You must use secure a secure form of FTP (SFTP).
• The SSH Secure Client and PuTTY are installed in the lab.
• SSH and PuTTY provide both SFTP and a secture remote logon (telnet) clients. With them, you can log on to the system and work directly in command line Linux.
• You can get PuTTY at http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/.